Chapter 4 - THE NAME MARCUS NEVER WANTED ME TO KNOWI didn’t sleep.
Two black SUVs arrived within forty minutes.
Then another.
Men wearing dark jackets moved through the alley behind the bakery, photographing shell casings, checking rooftops, speaking quietly into earpieces.
Bellhaven had one traffic light, two lobster restaurants, and a police department whose most dramatic recent case involved a stolen lawn mower.
People noticed.
By sunset, half the town was standing across the street pretending they needed coffee from the convenience store.
I was furious.
Marcus didn’t care.
“Pack clothes for three days.”
“No.”
He stood in June’s kitchen, speaking into his phone while simultaneously checking the twins through the window.
Noah and Eli were in the backyard with June and two armed security guards.
“They’re not soldiers,” I snapped.
“I’m aware.”
“Then stop surrounding them with guns.”
“The weapons are concealed.”
“I saw one.”
“You know what to look for.”
“Because I lived with you.”
Marcus ended the call.
“That shooter fired three rounds into a room containing my children.”
“Our children.”
His expression shifted.
“Fine. Our children.”
“You don’t get to walk into our lives and start issuing orders.”
“I’m not arguing about this.”
“That sentence is exactly why I left.”
His jaw tightened.
“You left because you believed I betrayed you.”
“And because you always believed control was the same thing as protection.”
His eyes darkened.
“Today someone tried to kill you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The first bullet hit exactly where your head had been.”
That silenced me.
Marcus walked closer but kept several feet between us.
It was strange how carefully he watched that distance now.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to keep Noah and Eli alive.”
I hated that he had chosen the one argument I couldn’t fight.
“Where?”
“A property outside Boston.”
“No.”
“Elena.”
“Not one of your mansions.”
“It’s secure.”
“So is prison.”
His mouth almost twitched.
Almost.
“You always hated losing arguments.”
“I rarely lost.”
“You disappeared for four years. I think that counts as winning.”
The bitterness in his voice surprised me.
Before I could answer, June entered.
“Go.”
I turned.
“What?”
She wiped flour from her hands.
“Take the boys and go.”
“June—”
“I’m sixty-eight years old, Elena. I’m not interested in being dramatic. Somebody just fired bullets through my bakery.”
Marcus glanced at her.
“I’ll pay for all repairs.”
June pointed one finger at him.
“You’ll do nothing until she says you can.”
To my amazement, Marcus nodded.
June looked back at me.
“The boys need somewhere safer.”
That settled it.
Two hours later, we left Bellhaven.
I sat between Noah and Eli in the rear seat of an armored SUV.
Marcus sat across from us.
The twins stared at him shamelessly.
Finally Noah asked, “Are you rich?”
I closed my eyes.
Marcus replied, “Yes.”
“How rich?”
“Enough.”
Eli leaned forward.
“Do you have a helicopter?”
“Yes.”
Noah gasped.
“A boat?”
“Yes.”
“A dinosaur?”
Marcus considered.
“Not currently.”
Eli whispered to Noah, “We should ask for one.”
I rubbed my temples.
Marcus looked out the window to hide a smile.
Watching him with them felt dangerous.
I had spent years turning Marcus into a villain in my mind because villains were easier to survive than complicated men.
But the twins didn’t see Marcus Vale, ruthless billionaire.
They saw a father with a helicopter.
Children were terrifyingly easy to impress.
We reached the estate after midnight.
It stood behind stone walls in a forest north of Boston.
The house was smaller than Marcus’s Manhattan townhouse, which meant it was still larger than most hotels.
Noah woke immediately.
“Whoa.”
Eli pressed his face against the glass.
“You live here?”
“Sometimes,” Marcus said.
“Can we?”
I stiffened.
Marcus answered carefully.
“For tonight.”
Good.
Inside, staff appeared as if they had been standing awake waiting for us.
A woman named Mrs. Harper prepared two guest rooms.
The twins refused separate rooms.
“They’ve always slept together,” I explained.
Marcus watched while I tucked them into one enormous bed.
Noah had inherited my habit of sleeping with one hand beneath his cheek.
Eli kicked off blankets within seconds.
Marcus stood in the doorway.
“You can come closer,” I whispered.
He hesitated.
Then approached the bed.
For several seconds, he simply looked at them.
His expression was impossible to read.
“Which one was born first?”
“Noah.”
“How much did they weigh?”
“Noah was five pounds nine ounces. Eli was five pounds four.”
“Premature?”
“Three weeks.”
“Any complications?”
“Eli needed oxygen for a few hours.”
Marcus stared at him.
“Were you alone?”
The question hurt more than I expected.
“June was there.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I looked at the boys.
“Yes.”
His hand curled into a fist.
“I should have been there.”
“You didn’t know.”
“You could have told me.”
“And you could have kept your pants on.”
His face tightened.
I immediately hated myself.
Not because I had forgiven him.
Because if he was telling the truth, the sentence was cruel.
Marcus quietly left the room.
I waited ten minutes before following.
I found him downstairs in a study.
He stood beside the fireplace, staring at a file spread across the desk.
A familiar photograph lay on top.
Chloe.
I stopped.
“Where is she?”
Marcus turned.
“What?”
“My sister.”
“I don’t know.”
“You said she was working with someone.”
“She disappeared six months after you did.”
A strange pressure formed in my chest.
“You never found her?”
“No.”
“You found me.”
“Eventually.”
“You had four years.”
“So did the FBI.”
That caught me off guard.
“The FBI?”
Marcus pushed the file toward me.
Inside were photographs.
Chloe entering a hotel.
Chloe speaking with an older man.
Bank statements.
Phone records.
A photograph of her boarding a private jet.
“What is this?”
“Your sister received three million dollars two days after you disappeared.”
I stared at the number.
“From who?”
“A shell company.”
“Whose?”
“We followed it through seven corporations.”
“And?”
Marcus tapped a photograph.
The man beside Chloe looked vaguely familiar.
Silver hair.
Thin face.
Cold smile.
“Victor Hale.”
I knew the name.
Everyone in business knew it.
Hale Industries.
Marcus’s largest competitor.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if Hale wanted leverage against me.”
“By breaking us up?”
“By destabilizing me.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You give yourself enormous importance.”
“Hale lost nine hundred million dollars when I blocked his port acquisition.”
“And my sister decided to drug you for revenge?”
“I don’t know what she thought she was doing.”
I stared at Chloe’s photograph.
Memories arrived unwanted.
Chloe borrowing money.
Chloe complaining that Marcus never liked her.
Chloe asking questions about our schedule.
Chloe once saying, jokingly, If I had your life, I’d never let him out of my sight.
I had laughed.
“What happened after that night?” I asked.
Marcus became very still.
“I found Chloe in the kitchen.”
“And?”
“She claimed we had been having an affair for months.”
My stomach turned.
“What?”
“She said you had discovered us and finally learned the truth.”
I looked at him.
“You believed her?”
“For approximately thirty seconds.”
“How flattering.”
“I knew I hadn’t been sleeping with her.”
“Because?”
“Because I was in love with you.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
Marcus looked away.
“I asked where you went. She said she didn’t know. Then she began crying. She kept insisting I had promised to leave you.”
My throat tightened.
“What did you do?”
“I called security.”
“Of course.”
“The cameras showed you leaving through the service entrance.”
I remembered.
“You were gone before I reached the street.”
“I took a cab.”
“We tracked it to Penn Station.”
My heart stopped.
“You knew?”
“I arrived nineteen minutes after your train left.”
I pictured him there.
Searching crowds.
Calling my dead phone.
I hated the image because it complicated everything.
Marcus continued.
“The next morning, I had Chloe detained.”
“You what?”
“Not harmed.”
“That clarification concerns me.”
“She admitted someone paid her.”
I gripped the desk.
“She admitted it?”
“She claimed she thought the drug would only make me disoriented. She said Hale’s people told her to create compromising photographs.”
“Why?”
“To destroy an upcoming merger. If photographs of me with my fiancée’s sister became public, several conservative investors would withdraw.”
“So she sold me for money.”
Marcus’s silence confirmed it.
Tears burned my eyes.
“What happened to her?”
“She escaped before I could turn her over to federal investigators.”
“How?”
“Someone inside my organization helped her.”
I looked at him sharply.
“Who?”
“I still don’t know.”
A phone vibrated.
Marcus glanced at the screen.
His entire posture changed.
“What?”
He answered.
“Vale.”
Silence.
Then:
“Where?”
His expression hardened.
“Send it.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?”
Marcus held out his phone.
An image appeared.
A photograph taken tonight.
Noah and Eli walking from my bakery toward the SUV.
Someone had photographed them from across the street.
Underneath was a message.
THE CHILDREN SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED.
My knees weakened.
Marcus caught my arm.
This time, I didn’t pull away.
“Who sent that?”
“We don’t know.”
I stared at my sons on the screen.
“There’s another message,” Marcus said.
He swiped.
My breath stopped.
ASK ELENA WHY HER SISTER NEVER CAME HOME.
I looked at Marcus.
“What does that mean?”
His face was grim.
May you like
“I think Chloe may be dead.”
And suddenly, the betrayal I had spent four years hating my sister for began to look like the first move in something much larger.
Related Stories
